A Small Place By Jamaica Kincaid - 1266 Words

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid analyzes the ugliness of tourism through the effects of colonialism. The book is a punch in the gut for every tourist, westerner, and individuals who are the product of colonialism. Most western education does not teach the full context of colonialism. The extension of students’ knowledge is the Berlin conference of 1884, which divided African territory between Europeans and US leaders without the inclusion of Africans. The education in the West does not delve into the impact of the conference after colonialism. There is never a mention about the lack of identity throughout the region, the lackluster of education, or the social and government corruption. Textbooks tend to have a brief chapter titled†¦show more content†¦Impoverished neighborhoods suffer from low access to electricity, water, and gas for multiple days in a row. However from a naked tourist eyes, Egypt is the land of pharaohs with beautiful landscapes and an exotic cultu re. I thought this book was interesting because it gave a bold and honest view of tourism. As much as everyone has been guilty of being a ‘tourist,’ tourism has a strong effect on culture. In A Small Place, Kincaid constantly refers to the broken library sign, which reads â€Å"â€Å"THIS BUILDING WAS DAMAGED IN THE EARTHQUAKE OF 1974. REPAIRS ARE PENDING.† The library sign is a symbol of Antigua’s damaged culture. The earthquake evoked the move from colonial to self-rule, which disrupted the culture that the building was meant to serve. The sign is used as a symbol of how Antiguans are trapped in their colonial past and are still enduring the impacts of their colonizers. For example, hotel training school is offered to teach Antiguans how to essentially be a good ‘servant.’ This idea relates back to tourism. As Kincaid eludes most of the tourists who vacation in Antigua are white or from Western backgrounds. To develop a hotel training schoo l in a post-colonized country, it would assume that it is culturally acceptable to serve white individuals as a ‘job.’ Sadly, that is the reality in many African countries such as Uganda where tourism is developed to be an extra and a unique experience. I have attached a photo of porters at Uganda’s BwindiShow MoreRelatedA Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid1389 Words   |  6 PagesA Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid presents the hypothetical story of a tourist visiting Antigua, the author’s hometown. Kincaid places the reader in the shoes of the tourist, and tells the tourist what he/she would see through his/her travels on the island. She paints a picturesque scene of the tourist’s view of Antigua, but stains the image with details of issues that most tourists overlook: the bad roads, the origin of the so-called native food, the inefficiency of the plumbing systems in resortsRead MoreA Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid1447 Words   |  6 Pages In â€Å"A Small Place† by Jamaica Kincaid, Kincaid criticizes tourists for being heartless and ignorant to the problems that the people of Antigua had and the sacrifices that had to be made to make Antigua a tremendous tourist/vacation spot. While Kincaid makes a strong argument, her argument suggests that she doesnt realize what tourism is for the tourists. In other words, tourism is an escape for those who are going on vacation and the tourists are well within their rights to be â€Å"ignorant†, especiallyRead MoreA Small Place By Jamaica Kincaid1525 Words   |  7 Pages Jamaica Kincaid, an essayist, explains the idea that history of the Caribbean (specifically Antigua), helps shape identity through her book, â€Å"A Small Place†. In regards the history, Kincaid also discloses how capitalism and colonialism are used as a foundation in shaping our epistemological ways of knowing the self and the world around us. In this essay, Kincaid uses tourism as a way o f viewing the effects of capitalism and colonialism. She disliked tourist and through her accounts, there is tensionRead MorePersuasive Analysis Of Jamaica Kincaid s A Small Place1451 Words   |  6 PagesPersuasive Methods in A Small Place Jamaica Kincaid’s influential work of nonfiction â€Å"A Small Place† (1988) tells how a once beautiful island in the Caribbean has been transformed into a disgusting holiday resort that is there to only accommodate American and European tourists. Kincaid seeks to inform the readers about the situation and the history of Antigua, and also to remind them of the role they played in the downfall of the small island. Although her tone is full of anger, she does not forgetRead MoreOpinions towards Imperialism in Antigua in the Novel, A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid1078 Words   |  4 PagesIn the novel, A Small Place, Jamaica Kincaid expresses her opinion towards imperialism in Antigua, which has change the way how Antiguan people live. She then talks about issues of tourism and corruption, and how everything to the readers is â€Å"your fault† as she described. Kincaid also reveals the native’s view on tourism. The book is written in second person, explaini ng her opinion, and the reader is spoken to directly in the book. To make more sense of this, the reader is like a tourist whose visitingRead MoreA Small Place Part 3 Rhetorical Analysis1373 Words   |  6 PagesA Small Place Part 3 Rhetorical Analysis A Small Place, a novel written by Jamaica Kincaid, is a story relating to the small country of Antigua and its dilemmas from Jamaica Kincaid’s point of view. In this novel Kincaid is trying to inform her audience that Antigua is in a poor state due to British imperial, government corruption, and tourism. Kincaid exposes her audience to the effect of these very problems in Antigua by using persuasive visual language. In the third part of Jamaica Kincaid’s ARead MoreExposing the Ugliness of Tourism in Jamaica Kincaids Book, A Small Place763 Words   |  3 PagesJamaica Kincaid addresses the reader as a tourist in her book A Small Place. Throughout the book her sarcasm and resentment towards the postcolonial state of the country cannot be missed. She exposes the â€Å"ugliness† of tourism, she writes, â€Å"The thing you have always suspected about yourself the minute you become a tourist is true: A tourist is an ugly human being† (14). Kincaid points to the fact that the tourists (European and American) and the tourism industry are morally ugly. The first sectionRead MoreLucy by Jamaica Kincaid Essay1613 Words   |  7 PagesJourney into Discovering My True Self Jamaica Kincaid’s success as a writer was not easily attained as she endured struggles of having to often sleep on the floor of her apartment because she could not afford to buy a bed. She described herself as being a struggling writer, who did not know how to write, but sheer determination and a fortunate encounter with the editor of The New Yorker, William Shawn who set the epitome for her writing success. Ms. Kincaid was a West-Indian American writer whoRead MoreAnalysis Of Ann Hood And Jamaica Kincaid1373 Words   |  6 Pagesand Jamaica Kincaid, their family’s both certainly had enough of an impact on them to write articles about their personal pasts. Although the articles have a much different flow and a much different objective, they both touch on the effect their families have had on them growing up. When reading both articles it is apparent that Ann Hood has a better grasp on the importance of family values than Jamaica Kincaid does, because of the more nurt uring way Hood was raised, in comparison to Kincaid. AnnRead MoreBanal Racism in Antigua: An Examination of A Small Place and its Critics1186 Words   |  5 Pagesentitled â€Å"A Small Place Writes Back† that â€Å"A Small Place begins with Jamaica Kincaid placing herself in a unique position able to understand the tourist and the Antiguan and despise both while identifying with neither† (895). Another critic, Suzanne Gauch, adds to this claim by asserting that â€Å"A Small Place disappoints†¦readers when it undermines the authority of its own narrator by suggesting that she is hardly representative of average Antiguans† (912). In her narrative A Small Place, Kincaid often attacks

The Iranian Revolution of 1979

People poured into the streets of Tehran and other cities, chanting Marg bar Shah or Death to the Shah, and Death to America! Middle-class Iranians, leftist university students, and Islamist supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini united to demand the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. From October of 1977 to February of 1979, the people of Iran called for the end of the monarchy but they didnt necessarily agree on what should replace it. Background to the Revolution Shah Reza Pahlevi, returning to Iran after a week-long exile due to the failled Mohamed Mossadegh coup detat.   Bettmann/Getty Images In 1953, the American CIA helped to overthrow a democratically elected prime minister in Iran and restore the Shah to his throne. The Shah was a modernizer in many ways, promoting the growth of a modern economy and a middle class, and championing womens rights. He outlawed the chador or hijab (the full-body veil), encouraged education of women up to and including at the university level, and advocated employment opportunities outside the home for women. However, the Shah also ruthlessly suppressed dissent, jailing and torturing his political opponents. Iran became a police state, monitored by the hated SAVAK secret police. In addition, the Shahs reforms, particularly those concerning the rights of women, angered Shia clerics such as Ayatollah Khomeini, who fled into exile in Iraq and later France beginning in 1964. The US was intent on keeping the Shah in place in Iran, however, as a bulwark against the Soviet Union. Iran borders on the then-Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan  and was seen as a potential target for communist expansion. As a result, opponents of the Shah considered him an American puppet. The Revolution Begins Throughout the 1970s, as Iran reaped enormous profits from oil production, a gap widened between the wealthy (many of whom were relatives of the Shah) and the poor. A recession beginning in 1975 increased tensions between the classes in Iran. Secular protests in the form of marches, organizations, and political poetry readings sprouted all across the country. Then, late in October of 1977, the Ayatollah Khomeinis 47-year-old son Mostafa died suddenly of a heart attack. Rumors spread that he had been murdered by the SAVAK, and soon thousands of protesters flooded the streets of Irans major cities. This uptick in demonstrations came at a delicate time for the Shah. He was ill with cancer and seldom appeared in public. In a drastic miscalculation, in January of 1978, the Shah had his Information Minister publish an article in the leading newspaper that slandered Ayatollah Khomeini as a tool of British neo-colonial interests and a man without faith. The next day, theology students in the city of Qom exploded in angry protests; security forces put down the demonstrations but killed at least seventy students in just two days. Up to that moment, the secular and religious protesters had been evenly matched, but after the Qom massacre, the religious opposition became the leaders of the anti-Shah movement. Ahmad Kavousian/Getty Images   In February, young men in Tabriz marched to remember the students killed in Qom the previous month; the march turned into a riot, in which the rioters smashed banks and government buildings. Over the next several months, violent protests spread and were met with increasing violence from security forces. The religiously-motivated rioters attacked movie theaters, banks, police stations, and nightclubs. Some of the army troops sent in to quell the protests began to defect to the protesters side. The protesters adopted the name and image of Ayatollah Khomeini, still in exile, as the leader of their movement; for his part, Khomeini issued calls for the overthrow of the Shah. He spoke of democracy at that point, as well, but would soon change his tune. The Revolution Comes to a Head In August, the Rex Cinema in Abadan caught fire and burned, probably as a result of an attacked by Islamist students. Approximately 400 people were killed in the blaze. The opposition started a rumor that the SAVAK had started the fire, rather than the protesters, and anti-government feeling reached a fever pitch. Chaos increased in September with the Black Friday incident. On September 8, thousands of mostly peaceful protesters turned out in Jaleh Square, Tehran against the Shahs new declaration of martial law. The Shah responded with an all-out military attack on the protest, using tanks and helicopter gun-ships in addition to ground troops. Anywhere from 88 to 300 people died; opposition leaders claimed that the death toll was in the thousands. Large-scale strikes rocked the country, virtually shutting down both the public and private sectors that autumn, including the crucial oil industry. kaveh Lazemi/Getty Images On Nov. 5, the Shah ousted his moderate prime minister and installed a military government under General Gholam Reza Azhari. The Shah also gave a public address in which he stated that he heard the peoples revolutionary message. To conciliate the millions of protesters, he freed more than 1000 political prisoners and allowed the arrest of 132 former government officials, including the hated former chief of the SAVAK. Strike activity declined temporarily, either out of fear of the new military government or gratitude for the Shahs placatory gestures, but within weeks it resumed. On December 11, 1978, more than a million peaceful protesters turned out in Tehran and other major cities to observe the Ashura holiday and call for Khomeini to become Irans new leader. Panicking, the Shah quickly recruited a new, moderate prime minister from within opposition ranks, but he refused to do away with the SAVAK or release all political prisoners. The opposition was not mollified. The Shahs American allies began to believe that his days in power were numbered. Fall of the Shah On Jan. 16, 1979, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi announced that he and his wife were going abroad for a brief vacation. As their plane took off, jubilant crowds filled the streets of Irans cities and began tearing down statues and pictures of the Shah and his family. Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who had been in office for just a few weeks, freed all political prisoners, ordered the army to stand down in the face of demonstrations and abolished the SAVAK. Bakhtiar also allowed Ayatollah Khomeini to return to Iran and called for free elections.   michel Setboun/Getty Images Khomeini flew into Tehran from Paris on Feb. 1, 1979, to a delirious welcome. Once he was safely inside the countrys borders, Khomeini called for the dissolution of the Bakhtiar government, vowing I shall kick their teeth in. He appointed a prime minister and cabinet of his own. On Febr. 9-10, fighting broke out between the Imperial Guard (the Immortals), who were still loyal to the Shah, and the pro-Khomeini faction of the Iranian Air Force. On Feb. 11, the pro-Shah forces collapsed, and the Islamic Revolution declared victory over the Pahlavi dynasty. Sources Roger Cohen, 1979: Irans Islamic Revolution, New York Times Upfront, accessed February 2013.Fred Halliday, Irans Revolution in Global History, OpenDemocracy.net, March 5, 2009.Iranian Civil Strife, GlobalSecurity.org, accessed February 2013.Keddie, Nikki R. Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.

Mediaculture Free Essays

string(172) " between culture and society, the break down of the distinction between art and popular culture, the confusion over time and space, and the decline of the meta narratives\." Week 7: Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, Feminist Media Strategies for Political Performance We live in a media centric world bombarded by the media images twenty four hours a day.   It is so powerful that we often cannot distinguish the ‘reality’ from the mediated reality. Media makes use of images around us to convey this very different articulated meaning. We will write a custom essay sample on Mediaculture or any similar topic only for you Order Now This often interludes with the notion of the people who control the media; which can either be the proprietor or dominant groups through force or coercion that control the opinions. These viewpoints are the factors that determine the news values, of the modern media, which often tend to trivialize or sensationalize the issues, according to the ideological stance. Feminist Media Arts have formed as a resistance to this distorted media views, to convey the ‘undistorted reality’ to the public. It’s more than an information campaign and the same time new mode of protest to decry the ugly stories media told about women. The feminist media work as the activists say ‘has three ultimate purposes: first, to interrupt the incessant flow of images that supports the established social order with alternative ways of thinking and acting; second, to organize and activate viewers (media is not the only, nor necessarily most effective, way to do this); third, to create artful and original imagery that follows in the tradition of fine art, to help viewers see the world in a new way and learn something about themselves in relation to it. ’ The authors in their essay point to the ways to attract the media to their campaign and force them to present their viewpoints. The authors say that ‘to understand how media operates, observe it -with detachment -and be pragmatic. It doesn’t matter what you think the media should cover, the object of the game (and it is a game) is to get them to play it your way. Mass media time is not a public service; it is a highly valuable commodity that is purchased by corporations and individuals who promote products, ideas, attitudes and images. The stakes of this game are high, and as artists the best we can hope for is a kind of guerrilla foray into that system.’ Here it would be wise to note the contributions of the Glasgow University Media Research Group (GUMG) and Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), engaged in research in the process of news production and the relationship between ideology and representation. The research of the GUMG has been very controversial since the publication of Bad News in 1976. Bad News was concerned with the television coverage of industrial relations in 1975. The GUMG’s analysis of television news led it conclude that the viewers had been given a misleading portrayal of industrial disputes, a portrayal that distorted the ‘real’ situation. The descriptions attached to management were such that they persuaded the audience of the rightness of the management position against the demands made by the unions. Thus, it has become the inherent nature of the media to manipulate things. In 1973 Galtung and Ruge analyzed foreign news in newspapers and found that for any event to become a ‘news item’, and therefore considered ‘newsworthy’, it had to pass through a selection process. If it conformed to a particular set of criteria, the news staff judged it newsworthy. Galtunge and Ruge calls those criteria as ‘news values’. The essay tells different methods to persuade the media for the political performance. But the question remains, if the media conforms to certain pre-determined news values, how can these campaigns succeed, despite the systematic efforts by the activists. Week 8: Jesse Drew, The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism. The essay attempts to portray the role of the video makers’ collectives, in many resistance movements. The invention of the video camcorder has in fact changed the course of history. These movements and the developments in technology when coupled with the ideology of post modernism, took art and activism to new heights. From the efforts of independent artists to the collectives such as Paper Tiger and the Independent Media Center, the revolt has spread to resist the images presented by the mainstream media and culture. So the environment was all set for a departure from the art-video, and experiment something new that reached the people. As the essayist says, television is, after all, at the heart of our popular culture, the culture of the everyday, and dominates the media landscape. Video, when all is said and done, is a form of television, ‘a media device that conveys information. It is natural that video artists cross the boundaries of art and activism, and frequently choose to ‘subvert the message, not just exploit the form. This artistic jujitsu, using the weight of television to fall upon itself, emerged as a popular strategy among video collectives. Increasingly, video artists in the 1980s and 1990s embraced the necessity to reflect on, intervene, and challenge the contested terrain of television, mass media, and popular culture, and leave the art-video aesthetic behind.’ As Strinati called it ‘post modernism is skeptical of any absolute, universal and all embracing claim to knowledge and argues that theories or doctrines which make such claims are increasingly open to criticism, contestation and doubt. The mass media are central to the post modern condition because we now take as real, is to a large extent what media tell us is real. We are bombarded from all sides by cultural signs and images in all aspects of media. According to Baudrillard, we have entered the world of simulacra. These are signs that function as copies or models of real objects or events. In the post-modern era, simulacra no longer present a copy of the world, nor do they produce replicas of reality. Today†¦..social reality is structured by codes and models that produce the reality they claim to merely represent.’ From the 1960s onwards there was a revolt against the modernists. The post modernists thought believed in the breakdown of the distinction between culture and society, the break down of the distinction between art and popular culture, the confusion over time and space, and the decline of the meta narratives. You read "Mediaculture" in category "Essay examples" The pop art of the 1960s demonstrates this clearly, for example, Andy Warhol presented soup tins and cola bottles as art, as well as challenging the uniqueness of Da Vinci’s portrait of the Mono Lisa by silk screening her image thirty times – Thirty are better than one. In fact post modernism has helped them to drift away from the so called artistic beliefs. In the words of the essayist ‘video artists in the 1980s and 1990s embraced the necessity to reflect on, intervene, and challenge the contested terrain of television, mass media, and popular culture, and leave the art-video aesthetic behind. The convergence of these new political, cultural, social, technological, artistic, and economic developments’ provided the impetus to the establishment of the counter movements like the Paper Television, and subsequently the Independent Media Center. In fact, video art has surpassed all other art forms in interpreting history. Week 9: Carole S. Vance, The War on Culture. The essay follows the great discussion in the world of art whether a self-censorship is inevitable when it comes to sexual images. Vance quotes instances where public ire overlooked the ‘artistic value’ when morality was questioned. Vance says that ‘the fundamentalist attack on images and the art world must be recognized as a systematic part of a right-wing political program to restore traditional social arrangements and reduce diversity. The right wing is deeply committed to symbolic politics, both in using symbols to mobilize public sentiment and in understanding that, because images do stand in for and motivate social change, the arena of representation is a real ground for struggle.’ He says that it is high time that a vigorous defence of art and images should be made. The author has given a new dimension to the culture war. This is not isolated with art or artistic movements. Representation of sexuality in media is more complex than in art, for example, counting the number of times that women appear on the screen because we cannot immediately identify a person’s sexual orientation in the way that we can identify markers of sex and race. Observations by Dyer on gay behavior can be more illustrative here on the representation of sexuality in media. He says ‘a major fact about being gay is that it doesn’t show. There is nothing about gay people’s physiognomy that declares then gay, no equivalent to the biological markers of sex and race. There are signs of gayness, a repertoire of gestures, stances, clothing and even environments that bespeak gayness but these are cultural forms designed to show what the person’s person alone does not show: that he or she is gay’. There are signs of gayness, for example gestures, accents posture and so on, but these markers of sexuality are socially constructed and are both historically and culturally specific. Media texts often rely on stereotypical narratives to indicate that characters in a story line are gay. These may include childlessness, loneliness, a man’s interest in arts or domestic crafts, a woman’s in mechanics or sports. ..each implying a scenario of gay life.’ Both lesbians and gays have been to use Tuchman’s term ‘symbolically annihilated’ by the media in general. The representation of these two groups has been particularly limited on television. The media has been very careful on such sensitive issues, but has not been so. Media has been overtly criticized primarily on its representations, but when coming to issues of morality, media tended to be very much conservative, and there of course has been   a lot of self-censorship. As the essayist says ‘symbolic mobilizations and moral panics often leave in their wake residues of law and policy that remain in force long after the hysteria has subsided, fundamentalist attack on art and images requires a broad and vigorous response that goes beyond appeals to free speech. Free expression is a necessary principle in these debates, because of the steady protection it offers to all images, but it cannot be the only one. To be effective and not defensive, the art community needs to employ its interpretive skills to unmask the modernized rhetoric conservatives use to justify their traditional agenda, as well as to deconstruct the â€Å"difficult† images fundamentalists choose to set their campaigns in motion.’ Artists can of course look at the way media behaves in this respect. Week 10: Kester Grant, A Critical Frame work for Dialogical Practice. Revolt, is word usually associated with the art movements and the biographies of artists themselves. Thus a shift from the galleries to community based installations is a natural course of the artistic history. The author explores these transitions as an inherent revolt that pervaded the artistic community. When the artists themselves began to question the gallery itself as an appropriate site for their work. At a time when scale and the use of natural materials and processes were central concerns in sculpture, the comparatively small physical space of the gallery seemed unduly constraining. Further, the museum, with its fusty, art historical associations, appeared ill equipped to provide a proper Context for works that explored popular culture or quotidian experience. Many artists saw museums, with their boards of wealthy collectors and businesspeople, as bastions of snobbish elitism in an era that demanded a more accessible and egalitarian form of art. There are many ways to escape the museum. In some cases artists chose to work in sites that were empty or depopulated (e.g., Gordon Matta-Clark’s â€Å"cuttings† in abandoned buildings, Michael Heizer’s or Robert Smithson’s land art projects in nearly inaccessible locations), suggesting a certain anxiety about the social interactions that might occur upon venturing beyond sanctioned art institutions. One strand of this work is represented by the agitational, protest-based projects of Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG), the Black Mask Group, and Henry Flynt in New York. Drawing on the energies of the antiwar movement and the traditions of fluxus performance and siruationism, these groups staged actions outside mainstream cultural institutions (Lincoln Center, Museum of Modern Art, etc.) to call attention to the complicity of these institutions with broader forms of social and political domination.’ A different approach, and one more directly related to dialogical practices, emerged in the collaborative projects developed by artists associated with the Woman’s Building in Los Angeles during the 1970s. Artists, fueled by political protests against the Reagan administration’s foreign policy (especially in Central America), the antiapartheid movement, and nascent AIDS activism, as well as revulsion at the market frenzy surrounding neoexpressionism, with its retardaire embrace of the heroic male painter. A number of artists and arts collectives developed innovative new approaches to public and community-based work during the 1980s and early 1990s. The late 1980s and early 1990S witnessed a gradual convergence between old-school community art traditions and the work of younger practitioners, leading to a more complex set of ideas around public engagement. This movement was also catalyzed by the controversy over Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in the late 1980s, Community art projects are often centered on an exchange between an artist (who is viewed as creatively, intellectually, financially, and institutionally empowered) and a given subject who is defined a priori as in need of empowerment or access to creative/expressive skills. Thus the â€Å"community† in community-based public art often, although not always, refers to individuals marked as culturally, economically, or socially different from the artist. References: 1.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, Feminist Media Strategies For Political Performance 2.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Jesse Drew, The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism. 3.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Carole S. Vance, The War on Culture 4.  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Kester Grant, A Critical Frame work for Dialogical Practice How to cite Mediaculture, Essay examples

Dairy Queen free essay sample

I was a twig, pole-thin, with angel hair pasta tangled all over my head. It was snack time, the summer vacation of every kindergarteners day. Two dozen five-year-olds with light-up sneakers dropped pencils from hands cramped with the brand new movement of writing A to Z. Lunch boxes sprang from their cubbyhole cages. The privileged milk monitor left for the cafeteria, and I sizzled with joy, hands popping, feet jiggling, eyes jetting, mind bursting, as I awaited the arrival of the milk. Children chewed their crackers with mouths open, and the tired teacher, fixing her hair and planning her outfit for a date that night, caved into her desk chair. The door opened. The smiles arrived along with the milk monitor as thirsty fingers selected their milk of choice – white, chocolate, or, in the more exotic cases, strawberry. My favorite cartoon characters grinned from the sides of each carton. I selected my crown from the wide selection of dairy drinks nestled in the milk monitors green basket. We will write a custom essay sample on Dairy Queen or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page It was my favorite flavor – white. Its not always easy to understand why a queen chooses to accept a crown. Some queens lust for power. Some feel as if they owe something to the people they rule. Others just think that wearing a crown is something they were born to do. In the case of this particular queen, however, it was not a large decision. Its difficult to say what spurred my decision. It may have been nothing more than the joy of snack time, or the surprise of seeing a Saturday morning superhero in the middle of the week. There was no way of knowing whether the women on kitchen duty added something to the milk, or whether the expiration date had come and gone. Whatever the case may be, I made my choice. I stood, while others sat, and proclaimed to the entire world – at least, it seemed like the entire world to me – I am the Queen of Milk! The teacher stood, too. She was taller than I was. Shut up! she screamed. Theres no yelling across the classroom, remember? Shut up! Sit down! Drink your milk! I did just what she said, and stayed shut up and sitting down for more than a decade. Silence became a welcome friend that squeezed my hand during conversations and kept me company when the rest of the world was loud. My brief experience as a dairy queen taught me two paradoxical lessons at once: 1) Spoken words mold minds more than the speaker often intends, and 2) The unspoken word resonates just as loudly as the spoken word. I now weigh, measure, stretch, crumple, and tessellate every sentence before crowning it and giving it to the world. It is my hope that the kings and queens to whom I give wings rule contented countries. And every night, I pour myself a glass of milk and place my crown atop my head. The Dairy Queen, although much more humble and reserved, lives on.